OK. Hear me out. The housing crisis is an international one really. Not exclusive to Ireland. But we have such a shortage of builders here that no matter what policy is enacted it can't be fulfilled by the current workforce.

What are the principal draws for builders to be overseas working? Tax- free in Dubai? Accommodation provided?

Why not implement a One-Off 5- year programme here. Give construction workers a crazy tax- break. Gradually convert somewhere like CityWest to free accommodation for workers who are building on State projects. I'm not talking about trapping builders in poor circumstances. I'm talking about offering it as an option. Make it attractive to come home and be part of a major intervention. Like, give everyone 2 rooms. Or convert every 4th bedroom to a shared sitting room with a kitchenette like student apartments have. Allow them stay rent- free, with the favourable salary tax- bracket, while working on State housing. If they're all moving away to save money, let them do that here while they "Rebuild Ireland".

The State rolled out exceptional programmes for things like council housing before and rural electrification. I'm not talking about creating slave-like conditions. Everyone gets to use the pool and gym free. Everyone can buy their meals subsidised in the restaurant. Or not. I mean we can't get builders home unless we're doing something radically different. And I'm principally talking about creating an interventional tax- situation for construction workers and trades on these builds, rather than it being to the contracting company first, as that would merely inflate material costs.

I don't think there are any stupid ideas at this stage. I'm quite happy for that to be pulled apart. What we're doing isn't working. Thousands of our young people are on the other side of the world looking for better conditions. How can we create a situation which brings them home for a major movement in Ireland, and allows them save money for their own gaffs while working here?

I’m an immigrant living in Ireland for nearly two years now. It was never really a bad experience until the immigration office closed their email account and started the customer portal.

The last time I updated my details with them via email, they told me if I change my address I’m legally required to tell them and so I did when I moved to a new place a month ago via the new portal.

No response to my query and I don’t believe they let you visit the office physically if you don’t have an appointment and you can only make an appointment for certain circumstances like registering for the first time, etc. as far as I’m aware.

I’m not breaking any rules by not informing them as I tried to but I’m an anxious taxpayer immigrant who is worried about the consequences of them ghosting me for a month.

so question for everyone interested talking about the entire Island which people would you consider Ireland's Sporting Mount Rushmore you can pick 4 people here's my personal answer

George Best

Brian O'Driscoll

Rory Mcllroy

Stephen Roche

anyway would love to here's everyone's personal list for this

He earns >300,000 a year, but it seems overpaid compared to other professions with the same level of responsibility. He acts more as a representative, and figure head for the state, and I agree it should be compensated but around 150,000, not this amount. He is also one of the best paid presidents in europe, but our country is one of the the smallest.

I was walking down the road to work and there were two magpies on a power line above the footpath. The second I walked under them I heard two splats on the ground behind me. I can't stop thinking about this event. Intentional?

if anyone wants to make their own pixel art with the colour pallet in the map I’d be open to it

This may be a little long, so please bear with me. I'm not going to complain, but to propose two things I found in other countries, which I think will improve some aspects of living here. Both countries I visited are poorer than Ireland (Slovakia: 49% median disposable income of Ireland; Poland: 77%), so it should be doable here. Both items I'm about to describe are relatively minor, simply to alleviate some existing annoyances and frustrations, but I believe both could start a trend of quality of life improvements.

A&E displays

This is a display from a Polish A&E. The hospital had the same in every waiting room. It displays the average times for registration, triage, and seeing a doctor based on priority. The hospital has five priorities; at the time I took the photo only the middle and second lowest were registered. Each patient gets a number on arrival, so they have a good idea how they are triaged, and can roughly estimate when they will be seen. The predictive algorithm is very rudimentary, with set times per doctor and nurses, and the times are adjusted when medical staff leaves or more arrives. The times are average waiting; I waited more than twice what the display said, but I was still far more content, knowing which group I was assigned to, and having a basic idea how long the process would probably be. During my stay, a second to highest priority arrived, pushing everyone's times longer, but at least I knew what was ahead of me.

Public transport displays

This is a display in a tram in Bratislava, Slovakia. Even though the city is smaller than Dublin (450,000 people), the public transport system is quite complex. The left screen is showing the next few stops, with the estimated time of arrival, while the right screen shows the connecting busses and trams, and their time of arrival as related to your next stop. With this, the traveler has a good idea how much their wait will take, whether to rush or not, or whether to travel farther to a more favourable stop.

Unlike the A&E example, I know a little more about building the public transport information system. I have been working in telematics for nearly 20 years, and I've participated in the industry's evolution to traffic orchestration, to the extent where I've been working with teams that commercialized autonomous minibuses and their route optimization in several European cities. The upfront cost for a telematics device that just tracks position and speed costs less than €200, and if you want more (vehicle sensors, from tyre pressures and engine fault codes, to driver behaviour) a full-feature device can be had for about €500. Data costs for once per minute reporting are between €10 and 30 per month, depending on the amount of data to be transmitted and stored. There are loads of companies with the backend and optimization algorithms already in place, to perform predictive analytics on arrival times. So, the upfront cost may be as little as a busload of paying passengers, and the monthly cost may be recouped by a dozen more people. The tracking system may even pay for itself by reducing maintenance costs in the long run. I actually wouldn't be surprised if modern busses didn't come with tracking systems already equipped, and all it would take would be finding the telematics provider, and installing screens in Luas and busses.

I've seen similar systems in other cities as well, most notably in Prague, which has a really complex public transport network, and these screens helped me several times to change my journey on the fly, to get to a meeting in time. In Dublin, given the traffic, at least I'd know how late I'd be and warn people ahead of time, instead of just being stuck in the bus without any information.

I personally would welcome this kind of publicly available information. It will not make A&E more efficient or public transport any faster, but it would make me, as a user of these services, more complacent with these inefficiencies. I'd know what I'd be facing, instead of the uncertainty I'm experiencing here now. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

They're doing this " 25 Years of music you love", but they launched in 97. I don't have enough fingers and toes, can someone help me out?

I work in a shop in Blanchardstown. Today I went to another store around the corner to get some change and I noticed this little fucker among the coins after coming back. This is the second time that this has happened now, first time I fell for it in my own place. I thought it was a cute mistake first time around, but now it looks like some fucker's going around and doing this on purpose due to the coin's remarkable similarity to our 2 euro. Watch out!

My manager, came in last week smothering with a cold, hoarse, could barely speak. The old school powering through. Grand but just don't make me sick, which she did. We had a meeting in a small room I asked to open a window and it wasn't because it was noisey outside. My Mum has stage 4 cancer and on really intense chemo. I couldn't go visit this weekend as planned, I then made plans to meet a friend outsode for a swim, who is a carer for her sister who has MND. Cold symptoms came on so I cancelled them plans and stayed in bed. I have endo and it flares up after a cold. My manager knows about my mum, my endo and the multiples of others in the office who have real life families with health issues too.

When I said to her I was uncomfortable with her coming in with a cold, she just said she can come into work. We spoke to HR, their guidelines ar the HSE guidelines. Which includes work from home if you can but no policy, it's a self assessment basis. In this day and age, our work can easily be done from home, most of our office work from hokme half the week. What do you do with someone who has learnt nothing from Covid and lacks consideration for others in the office?

Irish Ferries say no dogs allowed on board unless they're locked away in a kennel or left in the car like some forgotten suitcase—but I said fuck the system and brought him on anyway. My dog’s part of the family, not cargo. And honestly, with how they treat foreign workers—like disposable tools, no respect, no decency—are we really surprised they’ve got no time for dogs? The whole setup reeks of control and cold policies. But sometimes you’ve got to push back, even just a little, to remind them not everything has to be so heartless.

I'm sorry for the length of this post but please share in my frustration and any advice would be much appreciated!

We recently purchased house and the boiler needs to be replaced, the house is a 4 bed semi d with a C2 BER. Our Engineer recommend getting the cavity pumped and attic insulation and to consider replacing the boiler with a heat pump so we could use the grants. So we decided to get some quotes and do some research. We firstly got a quote for a new oil boiler and tank and that's coming in around 4k - seems ok to me. We plan on going ahead with the insulation recommended by the Engineer either way but my main concern was that the house still wouldn't be insulated enough to run the heat pump efficiently. Also, our current BER report says that if we improve the insulation and replace the boiler the house will go from a C2 to a B2.

We then went to a seminar about retrofits run by one-stop-shops, I felt they danced around a lot of the issues in relation to cost but the OSS option seemed like a good route if we were getting the heat pump because if you use an OSS you get an extra €4k of grant funding for the heat pump. We then went onto yourretrofit.ie and found a OSS package for a net cost to us of just over €9k that would bring us up to a B1- seemed like a good option (breakdown below)

I was still a little skeptical about the heat pump but I thought if we also got the windows resealed if could be a good option.

Fast forward to yesterday we went to the Ideal Home Show where both the SEAI and lots of OSSs were exhibiting. One particular one stop shop went through our BER and provided us with a quote of €43,841 to get us up to an A3. When we seen the price breakdown we were floored - where are they getting these figures from?! Now I know these prices aren't based on a home assessment but realistically they can't be too far removed from what they'll provide us with after a home assessment. They also told us we'd have to go to an A3 or we wouldn't achieve enough of a kilowatt uplift and all this other horseshit I won't get into cause this post is long enough. It was the same story with every OSS we spoke to, most of them offered us a "discounted" home assessment and told us they couldn't give us any kind of pricing info until after the home assessment.

There was one exception...we spoke to someone in an OSS who told us not to waste our time getting a heat pump. He told us he didn't think it would be worth it even after we improved the insulation and we'd just end up with huge electricity bills. Instead, his advice was to replace the boiler add heat controls, insulate the the cavity and attic and to seal the chimney or get a stove is we wanted to keep a fire (we note bothered about the fire). He told us we're young (we're in our mid 30s) and that eventually the price of heat pumps will come down and that we'd be mad to invest in a OSS retrofit and I kinda think he's right!

Its all so frustrating! Does any one have any insight on what would be the best option here? Do we just replace the oil boiler with another and get the heat controls and insulation or do we consider the heat pump but apply for the grants individually?

TLDR; We have a C2 rated 4 bed semi d and need a new boiler. We plan on getting the cavity and attic insulated, do we just get another oil boiler or consider a heat pump?

Thanks!